


And a Teenager Shall Lead Them

by Adam



Category: Power Rangers in Space
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dark
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-05-04
Updated: 2012-06-01
Packaged: 2017-11-04 20:28:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 14,838
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/397905
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Adam/pseuds/Adam
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On an Earth conquered by Dark Specter, one lone Ranger journeys to find the last hope of humanity.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: I do not own the Power Rangers or any of the characters used in this tale, with the exception of Karen.

Remember always that this is an alternate universe, very different from the one you know. In this universe a group known as the Psycho Rangers appeared and in two days succeeded in defeating the Astro Rangers. During their final battle in the center of Earth’s Angel Grove Psycho Red slew Andros as he saved Ashley from Psycho Yellow, only for her to subsequently fall regardless of his heroism. Psycho Black mortally wounded Carlos and together Psycho Pink and Psycho Blue killed Zhane. Only the T.J. and Cassie were able to evade certain death by teleporting away. Their Megaship was not able to escape Earth’s orbit, however, as the enemy fleet had arrived simultaneously with the Psycho Ranger’s assault. The ship disappeared and was never found. 

With the Astro Rangers all but annihilated, Dark Spectre and the cybernetically mentally altered Princess Astronema attacked the Earth, finally conquering the world. With their sovereignty established they constructed several gigantic factories to produce war materials and turned their attention to bringing the remainder of the galaxy under their dominance. 

That was two years ago. The Psycho Rangers were soon called away to lead Dark Spectre’s armies against other planets and it’s been many months since any of them have been seen on Earth. The Dark Fortress, too, has long since moved on and is currently believed to be orbiting the recently subjugated planet of Triforia. Ecliptor was named Regent of Earth and rules the planet in the name of his master. Humanity is kept in bondage by an occupation force of Quantrons, but while mankind’s will to resist has been blunted by the tens of millions killed in the initial conquest, it has not been destroyed . . . 

The hot sun beat down relentlessly on the auburn-haired adolescent. As he wiped the perspiration from his forehead for roughly the thousandth time and wearily adjusted his backpack, seventeen year-old Justin Stewart began to wonder if maybe this hadn’t been such a good idea after all.

His best guess was that the rebel camp was somewhere in these mountains, but with Lt. Stone dead there was no one to tell him exactly where to go or how to contact them. All he could do was trek endlessly across the lower areas of this rocky, inhospitable terrain, hoping against hope that his educated speculation was right and that he would be fortunate enough to stumble across some sign of the rebels. 

As a plan it might be considered by some to be overly optimistic. 

Still, given the circumstances, it was the best course of action his one hundred and fifty IQ brain had been able to devise, and he wasn’t ready to give up on it yet. Squaring his shoulders and ignoring his fatigue he marched on, wending his way along the gap between the two vast piles of rock towering on either side of him. 

“It’s almost four thirty and there’s been no sign of anyone. It’s time for us to go, Fred,” the attractive, blond eighteen year-old girl told her companion. 

“Ken and Sarah said Lt. Stone was gonna send his next group of recruits to the rendezvous today,” the tall, dark-haired and backward cap-wearing teen argued.

“Maybe he changed his mind. Or maybe they did. Whatever happened, they’re not here and we shouldn’t be anymore either. It’s been four hours, Fred. No one is coming.”

“You’re right,” he conceded with a sigh. “Let’s head back.” 

Fred Kelman couldn’t resist lingering for one last moment, glancing down at the rendezvous point far below them. It was a little notch in the rocks, one completely exposed from their cliff top. Standard practice was to stay prone, just stick your head out over the edge and make sure the recruits looked okay and were alone before taking the trip down to meet them.

They wouldn’t be doing that today and the realization left Fred more than a little dispirited. Bringing new people into the resistance was in its own way every bit as satisfying as participating in a strike at a Quantron barracks. Returning to camp from the rendezvous point empty-handed felt like failure and he loathed failing, at anything. 

“You realize we’re not even going to make it halfway back before nightfall,” Karen commented conversationally to him as he got up and moved to her side. 

The teenager shrugged, unconcerned. 

“It won’t kill us to spend a night away from camp. And they know it sometimes takes us more than a day to get back with the new recruits, so they won’t be worried.”

“I wasn’t actually planning on sleeping on rock tonight.” 

“You could always use me as your pillow.”

“In your dreams, Kelman!” she snapped back, but the blush on her face made Fred grin. 

He let her take the lead on the way back, since she knew the route every bit as well as he did . . . and there was a better view from behind.

He was undeniably attracted to Karen: she was brave, pretty and certainly tough as nails. He thought she liked him too, but try as he might he hadn’t managed to progress beyond the buddy stage with her. Even after all this time working side by side she still kept a distance between them, at least emotionally. What did he have to do to get through to her? Maybe an unmistakably romantic gesture was in order? Of course it was hard to send a girl flowers when you lived in a mountain range.

While pondering his dating difficulties the adolescent ended up walking right into the object of his affections. With a grunt he actually knocked her over and fell on top of her, his weight and the weight of his backpack pinning her to the stone. Okay, this would definitely make an impression on her, albeit not the one he wanted. 

“Get off me!” she hissed from beneath him, and he wasted no time in doing so. 

“Sorry!” he cried as he scrambled to his feet. 

“Shhh!” she urged him, pointing downward.

In the valley below them was another person, also wearing a backpack, with a sleeping bag attached to it. His light brown hair was arranged in a bowl cut and beneath his backpack his muscle shirt was royal blue. Blue jeans and dark blue sneakers completed his outfit. He was heading away from them, moving in the same direction they were going. 

“Shit! Just what we needed!” Karen growled.

“What do you mean? Maybe that’s a recruit from Stone!” 

“Then why didn’t he come to the rendezvous point? That’s where they’re supposed to go, and nobody has missed it yet. This guy could be anyone!” 

“You think he’s just roaming around these mountains for fun?”

“That’s more likely than him being a recruit who go lost. And if isn’t here to join us it would be a mistake to let him know we’re here. Security, remember?” 

“He’s heading in the same direction we are,” Fred argued. “Do you really think we can dodge him all the way back to camp?”

“What’s your bright idea then? Go tell him everything?” Karen questioned sarcastically, her hands on her hips. 

“We’ll just approach him and pretend to be here for fun ourselves. We’ll see what he says and go from there,” Fred said. 

Karen glared at him, but there was no real force behind it. 

“Fine. You explain to T.J. that this was your idea,” she stressed. 

“T.J. will understand,” Fred insisted, hoping he was right. After all, being spotted acting furtively would be a lot more suspicious than just going up to the guy and saying hello. This was the safest option open to them, right? 

“Hide your laser pistol,” Fred said, unbuckling his belt and stowing it, the holster and the weapon in his backpack. Karen did likewise. 

“Hey!” Fred shouted down at the figure. The object of his greeting whirled around, saw them and began waving frantically.

Fred and Karen made their way to the far end of the valley and swung around to meet the man. No, not a man, he realized as they drew closer. It was an adolescent, looking about the same age as Fred, though about an inch taller then Fred’s six one and even broader across the shoulders. He was beaming at them, seeming far happier to see them than a normal mountaineer would be. And there was something vaguely familiar about his face . . . 

It wasn’t until he was within half a dozen feet of the teen that Fred recognized him. 

“Justin! Justin Stewart, right?” 

“That’s right,” Justin answered warily, in a voice two octaves deeper than the last time Fred had heard him speak. “Who are you?” 

“It’s me, Fred Kelman.” 

The cautious expression switched to surprise.

“Fred?” he said disbelievingly. 

“So does someone want to introduce me?” Karen asked pointedly from his side. 

“Sorry, Kar. Justin, this is Karen Williams. Karen, this is Justin Stewart. He was another one of the kids my old sensei was training. We ran into each other a few times visiting Tommy.” 

During their brief encounters Justin had always seemed nice enough, though Fred had never found out for sure; it was hard to make pleasant conversation with someone you were jealous of. After he’d shown up Justin had seemed to claim the bulk of Tommy’s attention. Fred’s mentor had less and less time to spare for him. Justin had even gotten to hang out with Tommy at high school, being skipped ahead two grades because of his exceptional intelligence.

“I’m so glad I found you guys!” Justin said. 

“Why? Were you getting lonely roaming around here by yourself?” 

“I’m here to join your resistance group. You’re members, aren’t you?”

“Are you kidding? We’re just spending a weekend in the mountains,” Karen lied. 

“So then you won’t mind taking me back to your base camp, where your tent is?” Justin countered archly. 

Fred and Karen traded quick glances. 

“Why would you think you’d find resistance fighters here?” Karen demanded. 

“Because Lieutenant Stone told me in advance that I should bring a good pair of shoes and plenty of water to the rendezvous point. That means he intended for me to do a lot of walking, and I assumed that meant into the mountains, especially since that would be one of the best places to hide. This is the mountain range closest to Angel Grove and it’s not prohibitively far from the majority of rebel strikes in California. I guessed he was going to dispatch me to somewhere around here.” 

“What do you mean “going to”?’ Fred inquired. “What are you doing here if Stone didn’t send you?” 

“He was supposed to tell me where to go today, me and maybe a few other people. Last nigh, though, the Quantrons came for him. I don’t know what gave him away, but there was a full squad sent to arrest him. He still had a hand gun on him and he . . . he didn’t let them take him alive,” Justin finished grimly. 

Fred felt like he’d been slugged in the stomach. Lt. Stone had been their best recruiter; hell, he was the one who’d recruited Fred! His death was a tragedy, and a serious loss to the movement.

One more person he knew had fallen in the fight for freedom. One more crime to make the Quantrons, Regent Ecliptor and Dark Specter himself pay for! Their day of reckoning was coming and much sooner than they could guess. 

Karen, too, had been recruited by Stone and seemed equally shaken by his death. Like Fred, she took refuge in anger, but directed it at a different target.

“And how do we know that what happened to Lt. Stone wasn’t your fault?” she accused Justin. 

“What? Why would it be my fault?” 

“They were tipped off somehow. Maybe you messed up and drew attention his way.” 

“If I had don’t you think they would have come for me too?” Justin countered. 

“Maybe they did. Maybe you rolled over on Stone to save your own skin.”

“If I was that much of a coward, why would I still have come here to try to join up?” 

“Whoa, Karen! Don’t you’re going a little too far on no evidence?” Fred asked her pointedly. 

“I’m not responsible for what happened to Lt. Stone,” Justin declared, his face looking like it had been carved from granite. “Fred might not know me well enough to vouch for me, but T.J. Johnson does, and I’m betting he’s part of your group.”

“You know T.J.?” Fred asked in surprise. How did Justin know the Blue Ranger, their leader? 

Justin gave a short, sharp nod. “I do, and he knows me.” 

“Excuse us for a minute,” Fred said to the other boy, motioning Karen to one side with a jerk of his head. The two of them retreated about twenty feet from the teenager. 

“I think we have to bring him in with us.” 

“I don’t trust him!” 

“Karen, sometimes I think you don’t even trust me!” Fred offered in exasperation. 

To his surprise she actually flinched at his words. 

“I trust you, Fred,” she said softly. 

“Then trust me now. Justin was practically Tommy’s little brother,” he explained, surprised to feel a twinge of jealousy even now at that fact. “Tommy wouldn’t have spent so much time with him if Justin wasn’t a stand-up guy. And if he knows T.J. too, then doesn’t that pretty much clinch it for you?”

She looked away and didn’t reply. 

“Plus he’s a genius, Karen. We might be able to use him to help with Endgame,” he assured her, hoping she wouldn’t be annoyed by the mention of T.J.’s master plan. So far the exact details were known only to T.J., Cassie, Fred, Tom, and Martin, the officers of their group. 

“Okay, let’s take him to T.J,” she gave in. 

“Thank you,” Fred said sincerely. 

Together they walked back to the new recruit. 

“Welcome to the resistance,” Fred said, and for only the second time in their lives he and Justin shook hands. 

As they started toward what was presumably the resistance camp, Justin couldn’t help marveling at this coincidence. Who would’ve though he’d encounter Fred Kelman here?

Back when they’d first met he’d been impressed by the other boy’s obvious air of confidence and competence. It had been easy to imagine Fred leading the kids of Angel Grove to save their parents from Ivan Ooze’s scheme, as Tommy had told him. Justin remembered wistfully how he’d desperately wanted to make friends with Fred, but had been too shy to do so. He’d been burned often when he tried to associate with his peers and hadn’t been willing to risk rejection yet again. So he had ended up running into Fred a couple of times with Tommy and that was it. He’d never seen the other teen again, until now.

It was a lucky break that Fred was here today, judging by Karen’s reaction. Gritting his teeth and accompanying her all the way back to wherever this camp was would clearly be a serious test of his self-control, but maybe Fred could make the experience less of an ordeal. 

“So, Fred, what have you been up to these last few years?” Justin enquired of their trailblazer.

“Up until the Conquest I was just trying to get through Angel Grove High with good enough grades for college. Maybe you could have helped me with that, but by the time I got to high school you and Tommy were both gone.” 

“We had to move because of the new job my Dad got,” Justin explained, bemused to hear an actual note of apology in his voice. 

“Where did you move to?”

“A suburb a couple of miles outside of Los Angeles.” 

“If you live there how did you get recruited by Lieutentant Stone?” Karen snapped. 

Argh! He was never going to make it to their destination without killing her! 

“I don’t live there anymore. I moved back to Angel Grove a little over two months ago.” 

“Did you come back with your parents?” Fred asked curiously. 

“No. My mom died when I was eleven; my dad . . . my dad doesn’t approve of what I’m doing.” 

So Justin had lost his mother too? Fred had never known that about him. Apparently the two of them had more in common than just Tommy Oliver and the martial arts.

“I lost my mom when I was six,” Fred confided. “My Dad was pretty scared for me when I told him what I was going to do, but he supported me.” 

The memory of that support meant a lot to him, given that he hadn’t seen his father since joining the resistance. A visit would be too risky, for both of them. Less than fifty miles separated them, but it might as well have been a thousand. 

Yet it seemed he was still more fortunate than Justin or Karen. Justin’s dad wasn’t backing him, and both of Karen’s parents had been killed in the Conquest. 

Oh, shit! He hadn’t even thought about how this conversation would make Karen feel! He threw a quick glance over his shoulder and saw her eyes were turned downward, her lips tightly pressed together. A quick change of subject seemed to be in order.

“Have you been keeping up with your martial arts training?”

Justin laughed at the question. 

“You have no idea! Hey, maybe we can get a spar in later?”

“Sounds good,” Fred agreed, hiding a smile of his own. He was a second degree black belt now and, aside from T.J. and Cassie, no one in their group could match him. In fact he had pretty much become the camp’s de facto close combat instructor. The prospect of sparring against a new, presumably worthy opponent was an exciting one and he relished the thought of demonstrating to Justin exactly how good he was. 

“From what I’ve heard of your attacks, though, you guys usually don’t fight hand to hand.” 

“No, most of us have laser weapons,” Fred allowed. “That was why we hit that first Quantron barracks in San Francisco. How have you heard about what we’ve done?” 

“The official news doesn’t report any resistance actions; they like to pretend you don’t exist, but what you do still gets passed around by word of mouth,” Justin explained. “Knowing you’re out there and fighting back gives people hope. You’ve hit what, seven targets in the last year?”

“And the best is yet to come!” the dark-haired teen promised. 

“Something big coming?” Justin asked. 

“You have no idea,” Fred threw his words back at him, grinning to take the sting out of it. “Let’s just say you picked the right time to join up.” 

“When are we going to reach your base?” the seventeen year-old enquired. 

“Not until tomorrow morning. We can’t make it back to camp before nightfall and trying to navigate these mountains in the dark is just begging for a broken leg.” 

“Where are we going to sleep then?

“We’ll stop at the flattest place we can find before nightfall. First, though, there are a couple of humps for us to get over. Mostly we just have to do a lot of scrambling around between the mountains, but there are two places where you’re got to climb a rope to get to the proper elevation. That won’t be a problem, right?” 

“Hey, bring on the rope,” Justin shot back. 

When they reached the first steep area Fred put his backpack down and fished out the grappling hook. Whirling it around a couple of times he tossed it toward the top of the sheer wall they were currently facing. This time the hook caught on the hole which had been cut for it in the stone immediately. 

Fred turned to smile smugly at Karen, who rewarded him with a slight quirk of her lips. 

“About time you learned how to do that on the first try,” she chided him, a decidedly teasing tone in her voice. 

Making a face at her in reply the teenager tugged on the rope a couple of times to make sure it was secure, then began making his way upward. Rope-climbing had been bad enough in gym class, but doing it while wearing a backpack added a whole new layer of difficulty. Fred was pleased to note he was breathing only slightly harder than normal when he reached the top. Looking back over the edge he motioned for his companions to follow. 

Justin came next, and Fred was impressed at the speed and evident ease of their new recruit’s ascent. Karen followed, more slowly than either of them, but steadily and without a slip. Fred retrieved the grappling hook and rope, replacing them in his pack before the trio continued on their journey. 

The second climb was also made without incident. They’d surmounted the last real obstacle between them and camp; they simply couldn’t make it back in the time they had left before nightfall. 

“Okay, this looks like a good place to step,” Fred decided, looking around the fairly level area. 

“Might as well,” Karen agreed, dropping to a sitting position and stripping off her pack. 

“You’re sure we can’t make it tonight?” Justin asked in a tone fraught with disappointment. 

“Not a chance,” Fred answered, shaking his head and following Karen’s lead. “You’ll just have to wait. In fact you’d better get used to doing a lot of that.” 

“What do you mean?” 

“It isn’t constant excitement and danger. We spend a lot of time just training and waiting for the next mission. T.J.’s in charge and he doesn’t have us just striking out at random. Every place we hit is carefully scoped out and things are planned in as much detail as possible. We can’t afford to mess up, not with how few we are and what’s at stake.” 

T.J. had drilled that truth into all of their heads. No slip-ups, no mistakes, and if you did either, you fixed it as soon as you could. 

“I can be patient when I have to be,” Justin assured the other boy, dropping his own pack and sleeping bag. “Sound like T.J. is still doing a good job as leader.” 

“What do you mean, “still”?” Fred asked curiously. 

Justin hesitated, then said, “T.J. was kind of the leader of our social group.” 

Fred glanced toward Karen, who seemed equally interested, but before either of them could say another word Justin spoke again. 

“Speaking of training, you ready for that spar, Fred?”

“Here? We’re on solid rock!”

“It’s flat enough, though, and you were just saying how important training is. We won’t do full contact.” 

“Okay, fine, you’re on!” 

Karen watched knowingly as the two males stretched out. They could pretend this was a friendly spar all they wanted, but she knew boys and was very familiar with their testosterone-induced competitiveness. There would be pride on the line in this fight and both of them would be giving it everything they had. 

As they finished and faced each other Justin pulled off his royal blue muscle shirt to reveal the genuine muscles underneath. Karen was stunned by how well-built he was; his physique was almost at the bodybuilder level! 

Fred, too, seemed taken aback for a second, but drew in a deep breath and mastered himself at once. The sly grin on Justin face suggested he’d been hoping to intimidate or unnerve his opponent, but if so he’d miscalculated. With slow, exaggerated deliberateness, Fred took off his backwards cap and theatrically placed it down on the rocky ledge beside him. 

The sarcastic mockery in his gesture was clear and Karen had to bite her lip hard to keep from laughing. That was Fred all over! In the entire time she’d known him she’d never seen him panic or even get seriously rattled, one of the reasons he was practically T.J.’s right hand. 

And it was one of the many things she liked about him. 

She could be more than friends with Fred. It wouldn’t be hard; in fact it would be downright easy, much easier than always pulling away from him when they got too close. 

No, the hard part wasn’t starting a relationship with him; the hard part would be seeing that relationship end. 

Before the Conquest she’d never had anyone close to her die. The sudden shock of losing both of her parents at the same time had nearly broken her. For months she’d alternated between numbness and crushing sorrow. She might have eventually considered suicide, if her slowly growing rage at what had happened hadn’t proven stronger than her grief.

Resistance had been the only option for her and she likely would have gotten herself killed in a fruitless, furious attack on some random patrol group of Quantrons if Lt. Stone hadn’t offered her a better way. She and Fred had been in the same group and thought they hadn’t exchanged two words with each other at school somehow, in the struggle to adjust to living as rebels in a cave, they’d become friends.

What stopped her from going further was the simple reason that she didn’t think she could deal with another loss. If she and Fred did start dating and something happened to him . . . She couldn’t risk putting herself through that again. 

Not even for Fred. 

The two bowed and slipped smoothly into their stances. Each moved with the fluid, coordinated grace of a true martial artist and this, along with their height gave them an almost disturbing similarity. They circled each other slowly, their eyes weighing and assessing their opponent. 

It didn’t surprise her in the least when Fred made the first move, lashing out with a front snap kick to the knee which Justin barely blocked. Fred followed up with a punch aimed at the face and an attempted strike to the groin with his knee which had his opponent dancing backward. 

Fred pushed his advantage and the two exchanged a series of whip-quick strikes and kicks. Fred had been instructing her in karate for the last year, but the level of expertise displayed here was far beyond her. It was like watching Fred and T.J. spar. 

Fred nimbly leapt over a leg sweep and almost landed a pulled kick to his adversary’s abs. Next he kicked for his foe’s face, but Justin twisted his head out of the way and with his left hand caught Fred’s outstretched leg. Then his right fist rocketed forward and stopped a quarter of an inch from Fred’s throat. That seemed to signal the end of the match to both of them. Justin released Fred’s ankle and taking a few steps back they bowed to each other. 

“Good match,” Fred panted as he scooped up his cap. Although inwardly disappointed that he hadn’t managed the clear victory he’d been hoping for, he had held his own and confirmed the high skill level of their new recruit. With T.J. so busy running everything and Cassie gone on her long-term scouting assignment, it would be nice to have Justin around to spar against. 

“You’ve been training with T.J., right?” Justin inquired, and Fred nodded. 

“I could tell by your technique,” the other teen explained, a satisfied expression on his face as he turned to put his shirt back on. 

“You know T.J. well enough to recognize his style?”

“Definitely.” 

How on Earth had Justin ever managed to spend so much time with guys years older than he was? Yeah, he’d been in high school with them, but T.J. had been what then? A junior? A senior? Upperclassmen didn’t generally hang out with freshmen. Of course Justin had shared a devotion to karate with Tommy and T.J., but then so had he, and it sure hadn’t made any difference in his case! What was so special about Justin? 

Fighting back another spark of the old jealousy Fred sat down and pulled his backpack over to him. 

“I don’t know about you, but that was enough exercise to make me hungry.”

“Fred, you’re always hungry,” Karen cracked, and he happily threw himself into a different kind of sparring. 

“Hey, I’m still a growing boy!” 

“Yeah, growing in width!” she snorted. 

“Are you saying you only love me for my body?” Fred asked plaintively, smirking when Karen began to sputter out a denial.

That match he’d definitely won, even if he hadn’t played fair. 

Justin had proven his intelligence again in his choice of rations. Though dried beef jerky had little to recommend itself in terms of taste, it had a long shelf life and there was enough of it that Fred would have sworn the total mass constituted an entire cow.

“You came prepared,” he noted approvingly as he bit into his own dinner. 

“I didn’t know how long I’d have to be out here, so I brought as much food and water as I could carry,” the brown-haired teen explained. “What’s that you guys are eating?”

“MREs, meals packets from the military. We managed to cart a bunch of them in here in backpacks when one of the veterans who joined us said he knew where we could find a supply.” 

It had been a trip fraught with risk. Most of the nation’s military bases had been destroyed in the Conquest, the rest abandoned and off-limits. Going near them was grounds for summary execution, since it was assumed that any visitors were looking for weapons. 

Firearms of any kind had been strictly forbidden to humans. Many of those who had previously owned guns did secretly retain them, but dared not use them. After the United States military had been defeated there had still been widespread civilian resistance, quelled only through the massive aerial bombardment of any centers of rebellion by Quantron fighter craft. Since then most of those who had dared to fight back had been exterminated; the only reason their own rebel camp remained was because it was so well hidden.

“So that’s how you guys got your food?”

“A lot of it. Regular supply runs in would be too risky, so we’ve got to have stuff that keeps well. For the most part we only leave camp to go on a raid or to bring new recruits in.”

“Want to tell me about some of those raids?” Justin asked eagerly. 

“Sure, I can tell you about the ones I went on.” 

“And then I’ll tell you how they really happened,” Karen put in. 

Childishly sticking his tongue out at her, Fred began relating his stories. 

The sun had long since gone down by the time he finished. Justin had been a good audience, listening intently, and Karen had only had to chime in a few times.

Fred shivered a little, and not from the cold. Relating the story of their most recent strike, the one at the Silicon Valley processor center two months ago, made him relive it and it wasn’t an experience he enjoyed repeating. 

Silicon Valley had been the best evidence yet of the wisdom of T.J.’s precautions. If their advance scouts hadn’t tumbled onto the explosives being installed into the facility before they went in, they would have lost everyone. 

Subsequent reports from other potential targets had shown that this wasn’t a one time thing, but a pattern. All of the places in California that they would be tempted to hit were being secretly fitted with enough explosives to demolish a city block. Each one of the facilities could be rebuilt, but a rebel team lost could not, nor could those innocents living nearby who would be caught in the blast.

Fortunately Cassie had reported that no such measure had yet been put in place at her site, which made sense; the building Cassie was evaluating was not expendable. 

Quantron fighter activity had also increased markedly, not in combat situations, but in terms of scouting. They’d probably photographed every inch of California by now, not that it had done them any good. 

“Well, that’s it for me,” Karen admitted with a yawn. “I’m turning in.” 

Going about a dozen feet away from them, she took a blanket from her backpack, laid it on the ground and folded it over herself, using her balled-up jacket as a pillow. 

“Try to keep it down, guys,” she called back to them. 

“We will,” Fred promised. 

“It sounds like you’ve done a lot, Fred,” Justin concluded quietly, his gaze locked on the other adolescent. 

“I do what I can, but it’s the Blue and Pink Rangers who make sure we come out on top,” Fred pointed out, though he couldn’t help feeling pleased by the acknowledgement. 

“Why hasn’t the Pink Ranger been on the last couple of strikes then?”

“She’s been working on something else,” Fred hedged. Cassie’s whereabouts were as secret as any other aspect of the Endgame plan, and it was T.J.’s decision as to who was let in on that operation. This was basic security, in case any of them were captured and interrogated on a raid.

Not that any of them intended to be; Stone’s response was the rule if at all possible. Fred recognized the necessity of it, but that didn’t keep from wanting to vomit at the thought. Going down in battle was one thing; going by your own hand was something else again. 

So far nobody had been taken alive, though if the worst happened and one of them was captured they did have a contingency plan for evacuation. Whether it would work or not was another matter entirely, but so far there had been no need to have to find out. 

“Isn’t it risky not to have her there? I mean, it’s the presence of the Rangers that’s fueling the resistance, right?” 

That question Fred had to give some thought to. 

“It does mean a lot, especially to those of us from Angel Grove. And it’s given us huge advantages in fighting back! If we lost both of them or even one it would be a catastrophe, but we wouldn’t stop fighting.” 

“We’ll never stop.” 

“You sound like a Power Ranger yourself,” Justin commented. 

At this Fred couldn’t keep from bursting out laughing. 

“What’s so funny?”

“It’s just that one of Tommy’s friends, Aisha, told me once that I was in line to be a Power Ranger someday. That was right after the Rangers had beaten Ivan Ooze. I knew she was just trying to be nice, but for years afterwards I couldn’t help hoping . . .” Fred shrugged. 

“Anyway, thanks for the compliment, Justin.”

That was when he realized that his new recruit was staring at him in what he could only describe as slack-jawed amazement. 

“Aisha really told you that?” 

“Yeah, why?” 

Justin continued to look at Fred without speaking for a moment, his mind racing. He’d never questioned Zordon’s acceptance of him as a Ranger; he’d been too amazed and thankful at his dazzling good fortune to question anything about what had happened that day.

Given this new information, though, he had to wonder if Zordon’s willingness to make him a Ranger in spite of how much younger he was than the others stemmed from the fact that Zordon had already been considering someone his age for Rangerhood. 

Could it be? If he hadn’t overheard the truth while hiding under Rocky’s bed, would he and Fred be sitting in each other’s places now? The implications of that were almost too much to take in. 

“Justin, what’s wrong?” Fred demanded, his tone concerned and intensely curious. 

To his own shock Justin decided to let Fred in on a little of the truth.

“Fred, Aisha was the Yellow Ranger before the Turbo one, just like I was the Blue Ranger before T.J. When she told you that I don’t think she was just trying to be nice.”

Seeing Fred’s wide-eyed reaction to the news brought a smirk to Justin’s face. 

“You-you were a Power Ranger?” he managed to gasp out. 

With a twist of his wrist Justin revealed his morpher. Fred hesitantly reached out to touch it and Justin steeled himself and allowed the other boy to do so.

Fred swallowed twice, his complexion pale. He’d seen T.J.’s morpher and Cassie’s. This one looked a little different, but then it probably would if Justin hadn’t been an Astro Ranger.

“So you were a Turbo Ranger?” he guessed. 

His answer was a nod. 

“And so was Aisha,” Fred muttered. “Wait a minute, does that mean Tommy was a Ranger?!?”

“He was the Red Turbo Ranger.” 

Tommy Oliver had been not just a Power Ranger, but the leader of the Power Rangers! 

“That’s why he was always spending so much time with you! It’s because you were both Rangers!” Fred concluded, the revelation loosening something within him.

“How did it happen? What was it like, being a Ranger? You’ve got to tell me!”

“Do you remember when Rocky hurt his back, right before that big match?” Justin began, and he related the rise of Maligore. 

Fred pressed for more when the tale was done, but the hour had grown late enough that Justin refused. 

“It’s time to get to sleep.” 

“You think I can sleep after this? A third Ranger! Do you know what this means?” Fred inquired incredulously. 

“I do. And you’d better try to get to sleep anyway; I’m going to want to be up early tomorrow to meet up with T.J.”

“It’s less than an hour to the camp from here. I’ll have you to him before you know it,” Fred promised. 

“Great! I’ve been wanting to see him again for a long time,” Justin confessed. 

“You will soon. And Justin, thank you for telling me all of this. Everyone is going to go nuts when they realize we’ve added a new Ranger!” 

“You’re welcome,” the former Turbo Ranger replied. 

Like Karen, Fred spread a blanket on the ground and used his backpack for a pillow, while Justin wiggled into his brand-new sleeping bag. As he began to drop off he shuddered at how terribly close he might have come to missing out on all he had gained. Ye despite that he still couldn’t help feeling a bit of sympathy for the boy stretched out ten feet from him. It was certainly too bad for Fred that he had never become a Ranger! 

That was when the idea hit him out of the blue, a thought so startling he almost sat bolt upright. It was an undeniably crazy notion, surely evidence that he wasn’t thinking straight, but was it realistically possible? 

He forced himself to consider it carefully from every angle, evaluating the feasibility in light of objections, technological and logistical obstacles, and the difficulty involved in securing Fred’s participation. It would take a lot of luck and trouble on his part, no question of that, but it could work and he wanted to try it, for more than one reason. 

Perhaps it wasn’t too late for Fred to become a Ranger


	2. Chapter 2

“Fred? Come on, get up!” Karen’s voice insisted from somewhere above him.

Slowly the tired teen opened his eyes, blinking in the bright sunshine. As he’d predicted, he and sleep hadn’t had much to do with each other last night. There had been far too many memories to go back over in light of the startling revelation that Tommy Oliver had been a Power Ranger. Little things he’d never given a second thought to connected together and took on new meaning. Viewed with hindsight it all seemed so obvious, yet he’d never had the slightest suspicion at the time.

Of course Justin hadn’t suspected anything either. He hadn’t deduced the Rangers’ identities through his superior intelligence, like a real life Tim Drake; he’d stumbled onto the truth through dumb luck! 

Knowing this was genuinely painful, since he couldn’t help thinking how easily it could have been him instead! A couple of times Tommy had cut their training sessions short when his watch beeped and had hurried off. If Fred had ever followed him, perhaps to ask one last question, he would have seen Tommy teleport away. He would have discovered Tommy’s secret and who knew what would have happened next?  
In addition to being haunted what might have been, he was sleep-deprived, his back ached abominably from sleeping on solid rock, and he was far from a morning person. Nonetheless he rose without complaint and with a grin gracing his face. They were bringing another Power Ranger into the resistance! How could that be anything but a good, no, a great day? 

Karen had already gotten their MRE’s ready and Fred, after first putting his hat back on, gratefully dug in. Justin had risen as well and it looked like he was finishing his breakfast. 

Halfway through his meal Fred glanced over to see Justin staring at him thoughtfully. Hopefully the other teen wasn’t regretting having shared his secret last night. Was he worried Fred would tell everyone? If so then he didn’t understand the virtual impossibility of maintaining such a secret in the physically and emotionally close confines of the resistance. Hell, it was a miracle they’d managed to keep the details of the Endgame plan restricted so far!

Once he’d finished eating Fred stuffed his blanket into his pack and also took the opportunity to follow Karen’s lead by putting his holster and laser pistol back on, just as she had done. Inwardly he chided himself for his carelessness. He and Karen should have rearmed themselves as soon as they’d admitted to Justin that they were resistance members. He’d never seen a Quantron anywhere near the mountains (it would be cause for a potential evacuation alert if he had), but being prepared meant having your weapon where you could get to it if you needed it. 

“Ready?” Justin asked, clearly eager to be on his way. A feeling Fred wholly shared; he couldn’t wait to see the look on T.J.’s face when the three of them showed up! 

“Let’s go. Ladies first?” he offered to Karen. 

“No, but I’ll take brains before brawn,” she riposted, assuming the lead with a small, teasing grin. 

As Justin brought up the rear Fred turned back to look at him, only to see the other boy again appeared to be studying him. 

“If you’re worried that I’ll tell anyone what you told me, don’t be,” he whispered. “You should know, though, that there’s no way you’re going be able to keep your identity as a Ranger hidden for long.” 

“I’m not worried,” he assured Fred. “I plan to let everyone know who I am soon.”

“Good. Adding another Ranger is really going to boost morale,” Fred enthused. 

“How big is your group?” 

“We’ve got seventy-two people right now, seventy-three with you.” 

“How are you set for weapons?”

“Everyone’s got a laser pistol and we’ve picked up a dozen of the new laser rifles. They don’t just disable a Quantron when they hit one, they practically vaporize it!”

“Hey, are you two coming or not?” Karen called. She had stopped some distance ahead of them, her hands on her hips, her head cocked to one side, and her long hair gleaming like spun gold in the early morning light. Irrelevantly he wondered how any woman could look that good this early in the morning without first spending half an hour primping in front of a mirror. 

“Coming, ma’am!” Fred said. He was her superior in the resistance, but between the two of them rank had no real meaning outside of combat situations. Picking up his pace turned his head to share a grin with Justin, only to find the Ranger scowling. 

Uh oh. 

ΩΩΩΩΩ

Karen couldn’t help recognizing the irony of the situation as she walked. Today Fred, who was usually a pain in the ass to get up, had awoken with hardly a struggle and with unusual cheer. She, on the other hand, an early riser by nature, had fought her way free from sleep in a decidedly sour mood. 

Seeing Fred talking happily to Justin merely served to further blighten her day. 

It actually made perfect sense for Fred to try to get to know their new recruit better, to answer his questions and make him feel comfortable, thus easing his transition into their group. That was all part of being a good leader, and Fred had displayed a natural affinity for leadership from the age of twelve. He had proven his talent for it again on their first mission together, when he’d assumed command of the group after Mark Wheeler got his neck snapped. Fred was the one who’d told the rest of them to retreat from the barracks, covering them as they did so. He’d gotten the remainder of the group out alive, and it was his quick, correct decision-making and coolness under fire in the wake of their squad leader’s death which had marked him for advancement in T.J’s eyes. 

So Fred was doing the right thing, yet the sight of him being friendly with their new recruit still set her teeth on edge because, T.J’s old friend or not, she neither liked nor trusted Justin Stewart. 

Admittedly he’d gotten off on the wrong foot with her from the beginning and she was reluctantly willing to concede that she’d taken out some of her grief over Lieutenant Stone’s death on him.   
None of which changed the fact that he was a liar. She’d heard the ring of insincerity in his voice and had taken note of his unconvincing answers to some of their questions. There were clearly things he was hiding from them and that was more than enough reason to mistrust him. In fact it should have excluded him from selection altogether. Being in the resistance meant taking responsibility for the lives of those around you, and being willing to put your life in their hands. There was no room for deception in such a relationship. 

Then there was his personality to take into account. Fred could be cockily self-confident at times and privately she considered that part of his charm, but Justin went well beyond Fred’s level. Smugness practically dripped off him, most noticeably right before the sparring match yesterday. He possessed an arrogance which was all too familiar to her. She’d seen the same sense of self-regarding entitlement every day in her friends from high school, in the jocks she’d dated and in her fellow cheerleaders. It was a common characteristic of the cool kids, the ones with the looks, the clothes, the cars, the money, and the popularity. It was the attitude of those who considered themselves the chosen, the elite. 

It was something she’d had herself in spades, before the Conquest. Before she’d lost everything she valued and seen how worthless much of what she’d held to be important was. Before she’d grown the hell up! 

Now the prospect of sharing space with someone like-well, someone like she used to be made her feel nauseous. And if Fred really did make friends with Justin it would be even worse! How often in the future would she go to hang out with Fred and find Justin already there? Would Fred grow more interested in sparring against an equal than in training her in the martial arts? Would he be assigned to their team for future missions?

Karen had nothing but the highest respect and regard for T.J. Johnson. He deserved all the happiness he could find, especially now that he and Cassie were temporarily separated (Maybe when Cassie got back Karen could ask her how she dealt with the fear that the man she was dating could be lost to her at any time). In spite of her affection for her leader, however, she ardently hoped Justin would choose to inflict himself on T.J. on a regular basis and leave her friend alone. 

ΩΩΩΩΩ 

The home stretch back to camp proved more difficult than Fred had anticipated. Not physically, but socially. Justin and Karen maintained a tense silence for much of the way, neither of them responding to his conversational openers with more than a word or two. 

He had the uncomfortable feeling of being in the middle and didn’t like the sensation one bit. It usually took Karen a while to warm up to people and the exceptionally rough start she and Justin had yesterday obviously wouldn’t speed that process along any. Justin, for his part, seemed no more fond of Karen than she was of him. A natural reaction, but also a mistake; there was a lot more to Karen Williams than just her prickly demeanor.

He comforted himself with the thought that these bad feelings were temporary. Finding out Justin was a Ranger would help bring Karen around and once she lowered her barriers Justin would hopefully respond in kind. In fact Fred had kind of verbally nudged Justin to share his history with Karen as they walked, but the other boy had steadfastly ignored the hint. His decision irritated Fred, but the seventeen year-old couldn’t wholly blame Justin for presumably wanting to get settled in and get to know everyone before revealing his status as a Ranger.

Finally they began starting down the slope into the valley. Now might be a good time to share a word of warning. 

He opened his mouth to do so and ahead of them Karen vanished. A glance back showed Justin had stopped in his tracks, his expression wary. 

“Keep walking,” Fred instructed him and passed through the bubble of the cloak himself. 

The seemingly empty valley no longer appeared so; ahead of him loomed the massive bulk of the Astro Megaship. The grounded vehicle filled almost all of the available space between the two gray rock walls and towered to over six stories in height. As always the high-tech haven seemed anomalous sitting in this narrow gash between mountains; it looked like it should be in orbit or berthed at some Star Wars-type futuristic space port. 

Justin audibly drew in his breath behind him. 

“So that’s how you’ve stayed hidden for all this time!” 

“You got it. The cloaking field covers us visually and shields us from all known sensors. Two months ago some Quantron fighters were flying low overhead, scouting this mountain range we think, and they never even had a clue we were here.” 

Karen hadn’t waited for them and was steadily making her way toward the ship. Fred jogged to catch up, careful to step over the cables snaking across the ground from the ship to the deep cave its laser cannons had blasted into the east side of the valley. 

“We’ve got way too many people for everyone to have quarters in the ship,” he explained to Justin. “A lot of us have to sleep in the cave, but it’s rigged up with power, heat, and light. It’s not that bad.” 

“Do you sleep there?” Justin asked. 

“No, I’ve got quarters on the ship. So does Karen. You’ll probably be sleeping there though,” he added mischievously.   
“What?” the other teen demanded, his tone far from pleased. 

Enjoying this little payback for Justin’s refusal to enlighten Karen Fred went on innocently. 

“The ship is filled, Justin. All new recruits are assigned to the cave.” 

“We’ll see about that,” the blue-clad adolescent growled. 

In truth Fred thought it pretty likely T.J. would make an exception in Justin’s case and find some way to squeeze him aboard. But Justin didn’t have to know that, not yet. 

They entered the ship just as a fit young man of medium height with straight, dark hair cut short and a burn scar across his right cheek was leaving it. Hector Santos’ brown eyes played across the three of them before he addressed Fred. 

“Welcome back, sir. Still on for our teaching session this afternoon?” 

“No problem,” he assured his pupil. Hector was his best student and in Fred’s opinion was right on the edge of being a brown belt, but he’d been a soldier during the Conquest and the experience had left its mark on him. 

He was taciturn almost to the point of being mute; what had just passed between them was an excessive number of words for Hector. He almost never socialized and was one of the few who hadn’t so much as set foot in the quarters of Dr. Evans, their token psychiatrist and one of the busiest men in the resistance. Fred had tried a few times to get Hector to open up, but without success. Emotionally Hector was locked up tighter than a drum, though professionally he did all that was required of him and more. 

With a polite nod to Karen and Justin Hector brushed past them and headed in the direction of the cave.

“DECA, where’s T.J.?” Fred asked, staring up at the nearest camera. 

“T.J. is on the bridge,” the computer answered at once. 

“Thanks, DECA. Let him know we’re coming up with a new recruit.” 

“Affirmative.” 

“What do you teach?” Justin asked as they traversed the corridors toward the bridge. 

“Martial arts, naturally. We mostly shoot our enemies, but it’s good to be able to engage in close combat if we have to, plus the discipline and focus is really helpful. We train on the Simu Deck on Megadeck Five, but you’ve got to schedule weeks in advance; it’s the most popular place on the ship. Hey, maybe you could do some teaching too?” 

“Maybe.” 

They passed Ken, Nathan, and a few more people with smiles and nods. Seeing the new recruit with them, they understood that Karen and Fred needed to report to T.J. 

Fred noticed that while Justin displayed the usual reaction of looking around at everything as they walked, the sense of awestruck wonder most recruits displayed on their first time inside the ship was absent in him.

Well, that figured. Having been a Turbo Ranger he was probably pretty used to spaceships and all other manner of super-tech. This wasn’t the miracle to him that it was to the rest of them. 

They entered the bridge with Fred in the lead, Justin behind him and Karen bringing up the rear. 

T.J. Johnson turned from the console nearest the door toward them, dressed in his usual blue jeans and red T-shirt. 

His gaze immediately locked on Justin, his mouth falling open slightly. 

“We were only able to bring in one new recruit,” Fred said as he and Karen stepped off to either side. “But I think he’s a good one.” 

“Justin?” T.J. asked in a hoarse voice, looking as though he’d seen a ghost. 

“Justin!” he declared before sprinting up and literally bear-hugging their newest recruit. 

That was enough of a shock in itself, but what happened next was even more unexpected. 

“Get off me!” Justin roared, forcibly breaking T.J.’s fierce embrace. Off balance their leader stumbled back a step as Justin assumed a fighting stance, his face hard and his eyes blazing. 

For one frozen instant no one moved. Then with a visible effort Justin relaxed and let his arms fall to his sides and his gaze drop to the floor, the angry tension falling away from him as suddenly as it had appeared. 

“Sorry, T.J.,” he muttered. “I don’t like feeling trapped.” 

He and Karen exchanged glances, his one of confusion and hers one of vindication, but their leader nodded understandingly, looking a little embarrassed himself. Then he actually laughed! 

“Damn, you’ve gotten strong! And big! You’re as tall as I am now!” he marveled, his tone one of mingled pride and disbelief. 

“I’ve grown a lot since I saved you guys from Lionizer,” Justin said, raising his head. 

T.J. winced, almost imperceptibly, but Fred had seen that reaction before, whenever anyone alluded in the slightest way to the fallen Astro Rangers. And so, out of respect and concern for T.J., no one did.

They’d all suffered losses from the Conquest, but it could be argued that T.J. and Cassie had lost the most. Their friends, their teammates, had died. They’d been in hiding for these last two years, cut off from everyone but fellow resistance members. And each day they had to confront and live with the terrible, global consequences of their failure to defeat the Psycho Rangers.

It was a burden Fred doubted he could have borne at all, much less half as well as T.J. had. Every day their leader did all he could to rectify the consequences of his failure, to follow his own oft-repeated rule of fixing your mistakes as soon as you could. 

Maybe it was the Conquest which had led him to come up with that. 

“Yeah, you have,” T.J. said in answer to Justin. “It’s so good to see you again! Cassie’s gonna flip when she finds out you’re here! She and I were afraid that . . .” T.J. paused, clearly unwilling to complete the thought. 

“That I’d died in the Conquest? I’m a lot tougher to kill than that.” 

“I know you are, Justin.” 

“Wait, what’s “Lionizer”? And how did Justin save you?” Karen asked, brows furrowed. T.J. and Justin both turned to her and it was clear that they’d forgotten anyone else was even in the room. 

“Karen, Fred, Justin is the Blue Turbo Ranger. The Lionizer is a monster Astronema sicced on us and Justin came to our rescue after it had captured us.” 

“You’re a Power Ranger?” Karen asked in a tone of outraged disbelief. Justin’s only response was to smirk at her. 

Fred had to work to keep from wincing himself. Gloating definitely wasn’t the way to get on Karen’s good side. She couldn’t stand having her nose rubbed in her mistakes or defeats. 

“Not only is he a Ranger, but for a long time he was the senior Ranger on our team,” T.J. went on. “So how have you been doing? Who recruited you?”

There was no putting the bad news off any longer. 

“Lt. Stone approached him, but before he could give Justin the coordinates of the rendezvous something tipped off the tin heads. A squad of Quantrons came for him and   
he didn’t let them capture him,” Fred explained, not needing or wanting to go into any further details; T.J. understood what he meant. 

T.J’s face grew grim. “We never contacted him except in person and Stone wouldn’t have left anything written down. We should still be secure, at least for now. Fred, after we’re done here break the news to everyone and set up a memorial service at seven tonight, for those who want to attend.” 

“Will do,” Fred agreed. It was standard practice to hold a wake for those lost during a mission. Lt. Stone hadn’t operated in the field, but his task had been every bit as important as any member’s contribution, maybe more important. It was because of him that Fred, Karen, Justin and a couple of dozen others were here in the first place. He would be missed and mourned as much as any of the others they’d lost.

Then T.J. turned back to his old teammate. 

“Justin, how did you find us if Lt. Stone didn’t tell you where to go?”

“From what he said I thought he’d be sending me into the mountains. This is the nearest mountain range to Angel Grove and I figured you’d want to be close to the city, so I packed up and headed out here to try to find you. Fortunately Fred and Karen found me, otherwise I never would have located you. I didn’t know this ship even had a cloaking device.” 

“It didn’t. After . . . after the last fight with the Psycho Rangers Cassie, Alpha Six and I put down here. I got on the comm and sent out an emergency call to all friendly planets, but no one could come and help, not against the forces Dark Specter had here. No one would help!” T.J. hissed. “On Aquitar, though, the guy who answered my message put me in touch with a human on the planet, Billy Cranston, the original Blue Ranger.” 

“So you’re in contact with Billy?” Justin demanded. 

“I wish we still were! But interstellar communications are too easy to trace. Billy warned us about that. He said our first priority had to be staying alive, that it was the only way we could accomplish anything. I told him we couldn’t hope to even make orbit without being shot down and he sent us the technical schematics of a cloaking device he’d been working on. We had most of the parts on hand, but not all of them. We were able to jury-rig it anyway using parts from Alpha Six.”

This was the first Fred had heard of any of this. T.J. understandably wasn’t very forthcoming about the time immediately preceding and following the Conquest. Now, though, Fred thought he understood why T.J. kept the nonfunctional robot in a place of honor in his quarters.

“I wouldn’t have been able to do it, but Alpha wanted us to; he said it was the best way he could help.”

“But once you had it working why didn’t you leave?” Justin asked. 

“We couldn’t leave! We couldn’t flee Earth, couldn’t abandon everyone here to suffer under the UAE’s boot! Billy invited us to Aquitar, hell, he practically begged us, but we couldn’t go. We had to stay and try to fix things.”

“Billy said he was going to rally the free planets against the UAE. I told him great, do what you can from your end; we’ll do what we can here.” 

“But what can you do? T.J. there are millions of Quantrons here and more all the time!”

“I know. In fact I’m counting on that,” T.J. admitted, with an almost feral grin. 

Justin glanced from T.J. to Fred, who was fighting to keep his own expression blank. Karen simply looked annoyed. 

“Fred told me you had something in the works, but he wouldn’t give me any details.” 

“Join the club,” Karen muttered sotto voce. She’d accepted the limited circulation of Endgame, but that didn’t mean she was happy about it. 

“He wasn’t supposed to,” T.J. said gently. “The Endgame plan is what we’ve been working toward all this time, but it’s no good if they see it coming. I’d like your help with it, Justin, but you can’t tell anyone who doesn’t already know, and you have to be certain you can kill yourself rather than be captured. Can you do that?”

“I know what’s at stake, T.J.,” Justin asserted firmly. “I’ll do whatever I have to.” 

“I knew I could count on you,” T.J. said softly. “Karen, you’re excused. Fred, show Justin to Cassie’s quarters so he can drop off his stuff and then bring him back to the bridge. He can stay in Cassie’s room until she gets back.”

“T.J., could Karen stay?” Justin asked unexpectedly. “She and Fred brought me in. They can be trusted with this, can’t they?”

“I trust everyone in the resistance,” T.J. explained. “I’m keeping the number of people who know small to guard against anyone leaking it accidentally or in interrogation. Right now only the officers know.” 

“Couldn’t you make an exception for Karen? You’re making one for me,” Justin pointed out.

Again T.J. laughed. This was the happiest Fred had seen him in . . . well, ever! 

“Oh, Justin, I’ve missed you,” he admitted. “Karen, is that what you want? Are you up for the responsibility?”

“Yes!” she said, standing at attention. 

“All right then. Drop off your backpacks, get back here, and I’ll tell you how we’re going to carve the heart out of the United Alliance of Evil’s empire.”


End file.
